Stuff

The last of February’s regular monthly polls has rolled in – Ipsos MORI for Reuters have topline figures, with changes from January, of CON 35%(-3), LAB 41%(+3), LDEM 12%(nc). A six point Labour lead is the largest any poll has shown since before Cameron’s European veto in December.

The normal caveats apply of course, sure, it could be a sign that we are headed back to pre-veto situation, but equally it could be a blip. Looking at the wider pattern of polls we can be relatively confident that there has been some level of movement back towards Labour since January, but the polls seem to be averaging at around a 1 or 2 point Labour lead, so we are not yet back to the 4-6 point leads we were seeing last Autumn.

164 Responses to “Ipsos MORI/Reuters – CON 35%, LAB 41%, LD 12%”

@JIM JAM
“I acknowledge that I have the luxury of living in a Lab v Tory seat but were I in a Con/LD marginal i would have a tough choice.”

Well I don’t . I still wouldn’t vote LD whatever the figures. They will join the Tories regardless of the numbers and if they joined Labour they will fight for right wing policies. They have shown their true colours.

One thing that might possibly influence Labour voters in a Con/LD marginal is the seats/votes criterion mentioned by Clegg during the 2010 campaign.

Quite probably a future LD leader in that position will not feel the need to heed the precedent – but giving, in the first instance, the opportunity to form a government to the party with the most seats *or* votes does have some sense of natural justice to it.

It will very much be a battle of wills in the former Con/LD marginals… where it is not now clear whether Labour or LD are currently in second place.

Last time Clegg did not specify seats or votes as being the biggest mandate and got away with it.
As there could be a situation of Cons most votes, Lab most in seats 2015. I think Clegg (most likley still leader imo) will be pressed on this by the media.

LizH is adamant and I respect her position but others will take a different view whatever they say now. There will be perhaps 10-20 seats where voters like Liz will be crucial at the next GE. Once the new boundaries are in place (I presume they will) the LDs will be working these seats and such voters.
The Tories have a conundrum as counter intuitively the more they work these seats the more likely they could be to push such voters back to the LDs.
I would expect many internal polls in these seats; maybe Ashcroft will give some of his millions to local Labour parties :-) in LD/Con marginals.

I think the next GE is going to throw up more unusual results than for many a year.

Finally imo a minority Con Government would have led to a GE in a matter of months, for which Lab and LDs would have had no money; like ’74 a con majority the outcome, even if GB stepped down.

= these 2011 Labour voters rated Blair more highly than your wing of the party’s Brown. Over half (53%) thought that Blair the most capable leader while less than a quarter said Brown (23%) = a veritable country mile!

“One thing that might possibly influence Labour voters in a Con/LD marginal is the seats/votes criterion mentioned by Clegg during the 2010 campaign.”

That’s the special election I’m waiting for. Just because it would show us whether when push came to shove whether Labour voters would continue to vote for Lib Dems or whether those types of seats are easy targets for the Conservatives in the next election.

“Where America leads the UK follows, and we see a tea-party ideology gradually taking over conservative thought.”

In fairness, I think the UK is leading and the U.S. is following. The teabaggers basically are following stuff they hear about in Britain. Well kinda. They follow what screaming right wing journalists (who are all a bunch of wealthy, highly educated but unintelligent elites) who like what Cameron has to say.

Republicans have threatened to shut down the government and threatened to throw us into default for the first time in history but that was actually aimed at just making Obama look bad. When it comes to actual budget cutting, they haven’t done much. The leading Republican Presidential candidates scream about the deficit but inr eality, all of their plans would increase the deficit a great deal (and that’s not my partisan critique, that’s been established by independent non-partisan budget analysts).

Interesting. We should mark this in LA. If I ever meet Villaraigosa, I will suggest it to him.

Jim Webb’s brother is a bagpipe player. He would play them at election events, including the election night rally. I was reminded of how grateful I am for having him in the Senate today with the narrow defeat of the ridiculous Blunt Amendment.

I get that Republicans hate and oppose contraception. Fine (as Nancy Pelosi pointed out last week, we’ve been saying it for years and people didn’t believe us). But how on earth could anyone think it was an intelligent idea to allow any employer to dictate what kind of healthcare their employee should receive based upon their own “personal beliefs”? I mean, that is just asking for trouble.

And someone pointed out, do any of these men consider what might happen if a female employer decides she doesn’t want her male employees to get ED treatment because she opposes it on some “moral” conviction?

(Once again, I remind you that the two parties in the U.S. are NOT one in the same).

@SoCalLiberal – “… easy targets for the Conservatives in the next election.”

A number of leading Labour politicians did make an appeal late in the 2010 campaign, for the Labour supporters to vote tactically in the seats where a Lib Dem candidate could keep the Tories out. I can’t see the circumstances where that appeal could be repeated. (It is not clear whether voters are always aware of the dynamics of their particular constituency anyway).

On current polling Conservatives will be hoping to pick off more LD seats than Labour can gain from LD…. but they would be outnumbered by Labour gains from Con.

@Chris Neville-Smith
“Right, breaking news. Yet another by-election coming up, and it’s only due to a resignation so we don’t have to feel guilty about enjoying ourselves because someone died. The bad news: it’s in a safe Labour seat, so it’s going to be a pretty boring one. We really need the governing party defending some of their seats. Whatever happened to Tory resignations? Whatever you may think of the Tories in the 90s, they knew how to resign with style.”
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There seems to be a reasonable prospect of a by-election against the accomplices to the governing party in Eastleigh in the not too distant future. The interest will be in whether the LDs fall to 3rd place which would oust them from the role of main future challengers to the Conservatives. If so, Labour would have a chance of a further advance in a 2015 GE as the anti-Con vote realigns further. But for the intervention of the by-election in 1994, with hindsight the seat had the potential to turn out similar to Hastings in 1997 – i.e. Labour from 3rd to 1st.